Bargain for executed journalist include release of former Houston student

FILE - This undated file photo released by the FBI shows terror suspect Aafia Siddiqui. The U.S.-trained scientist from Pakistan who was convicted of trying to murder U.S. agents and military officers in Afghanistan should be sent to prison for 12 years rather than life because she is mentally ill, her lawyers said in court papers Wednesday Sept. 22, 2010. (AP Photo/FBI, File)

FILE - This undated file photo released by the FBI shows terror...

Before Islamic State militants killed James Foley earlier this week, they had demands.

They wanted money - colossal sums of it, more than $130 million - and had a "laundry list" of other conditions they wanted met, according to a recent New York Times story.

But in 1990 and 1991, Siddiqui came to Houston on a student visa to study at the University of Houston and to be near her brother. That was before she moved to Massachusetts in 1999 to study neuroscience at MIT and Brandeis University, where she earned her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience, started a non-profit and began raising a family. In 2002, she returned to Pakistan and divorced her husband.

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In 2003, she came under federal scrutiny when the FBI warned that al-Qaida might be recruiting women to carry out terror attacks and put the 90-pound woman on their "Most Wanted" list. They said that Siddiqui provided support to other would-be terrorists and helped them enter the U.S. and carry out attacks.

At the time, authorities said they hadn't connected her to any specific terrorist activities, but they wanted to talk to her about other people who might have been.

Federal authorities finally arrested her in July 2008.

Authorities detained her outside a government building in central Afghanistan, where police stopped her and searched her handbag. They found documents that contained recipes for explosives and chemical weapons, along with sites in the U.S. for a "mass casualty attack." Among them were the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. Prosecutors said during her trial that she had 2 pounds of sodium cyanide with her, according to news reports.

No communication

When authorities tried to question her the next day, she snatched a soldier's rifle and shot twice at her interrogators but missed. They returned fire, hitting her in the hip. Authorities also alleged that she said she wanted to kill Americans.

Siddiqui, imprisoned at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, was never convicted of any terrorist-related charges.

"She has no communication with virtually anybody," said Robert Boyle, her New York lawyer.

He said no one had contacted her about Islamic State's demands and said she had denied the charges against her.

"How can Aafia Siddiqui control what anyone says about her?" he asked.

Her brother, an architect who stayed in the Houston area, could not be reached for this story.

In some places abroad, her case has become a cause célèbre. In 2010, when a jury found her guilty of the attempted murder charges, news of the conviction set off a protest in Karachi calling for her freedom.

'Heartbroken'

Islamic State militants asked for Siddiqui's freedom, along with the release of other prisoners, according to Wednesday's Times article.

When that didn't happen, a member of the group beheaded Foley, 40, a photojournalist captured in 2012 in Syria, where he had been documenting the country's civil war.

Earlier this week, the group released a video of the New Hampshire man's execution and threatened the execution of another American journalist they were holding.

President Barack Obama said Foley's fate left him "heartbroken" and called the group's ideology "bankrupt."

Amid a storm of criticism, U.S. authorities announced that they had mounted a special operations rescue earlier this year but that when rescuers arrived at the site where they believed Foley and other hostages to be, they were gone.

GlobalPost, the online news site for whom Foley worked, spent years and millions of dollars trying to track him down, the site's CEO Phil Balboni told reporters earlier this week.

No negotiation

"I can understand giving money to these evil people is a very hard thing to do. I would judge no one who felt that it was entirely improper," Balboni said in an interview with NPR earlier this week. "But speaking for myself and for John and Diane Foley, we were prepared to do it if we could raise the money."

The U.S., along with Britain, have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, which has caused controversy in recent days over the news that other Western countries like Spain and France do. According to the Times story, European nations have paid al-Qaida $125 million in the last five years.